


Outside

by decayinghorizon



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Gen, Implied Relationships, M/M, jughead is angsty and Sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-11
Updated: 2017-02-11
Packaged: 2018-09-23 12:18:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9657203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/decayinghorizon/pseuds/decayinghorizon
Summary: Jughead should've known it could never last.





	

**Author's Note:**

> honestly can't tell if this is too dramatic or completely on par with how extra Jughead is in canon.
> 
> set somewhere after their breakup but before they talk in the first episode.
> 
> also, I have a Jughead/Archie playlist [here](http://8tracks.com/blonderuby/even-though-we-re-not-friends-anymore) if that's something you're into!

Jughead tries to think of what he could've done better, differently, to keep his best friend from drifting away.  
Maybe there's nothing he could've done at all.  
Because he is a message on a fogged window, he's invisible ink tracing patterns on a blank white page, always half there and half gone.  
A disappearing act just waiting for his smoke screen exit.

He's not like Archie. He can't radiate light, or cause a genuine smile, or make a room feel warmer just by walking in and existing there.  
If anything, he'd leave it colder, throw off the entire atmosphere, create a void and cause everything to collapse.  
He's the antithesis, the fatal flaw, and he knows it is never where he belonged, not by the side of someone like Archie.  
But it was perfect while it lasted, it made Jughead feel like he could've been worth something, because Archie thought so.  
Nothing again will ever feel as good as the years they were inseparable. 

From across the diner, he watches Archie sit with Betty, and can tell how much happier he is, how much of a burden must have been lifted with Jughead out of his life.  
Archie has his back to him, doesn't even know he's there.  
Maybe Archie wouldn't know he was there if he looked right at him.

He feels far away, like he's trapped behind glass, looking into a life that could never be his.  
It's where he should be, an outside observer, a narrator, a novelist. He shouldn't involve himself in stories, he never should have.  
Emotion only complicates the narrative.  
Love creates bias.  
It's better this way.

The distance between them is inevitable, was always going to happen. It's the universe righting itself, putting the pieces back where they belong, where they really fit, finally matching the picture on the box. It's the realization that Jughead was an extra piece all along, should have never been there in the first place. 

But for the short time they fit together, for the years the puzzle was theirs, it was all he ever wanted.


End file.
